Recruiter March 2013 by Redactive Media Group

March 2013

www.recruiter.co.uk

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR RECRUITMENT AND RESOURCING PROFESSIONALS

Russell Clements You can take the boy out of SThree, but what’s next for Clements after 26 years at the helm?

IN-HOUSE VIEWS The Forum for In-house Recruitment Managers surveys the resourcing pros on the business frontline

INCORPORATING 01_Recruit_march13_CoverNEW.indd 1

CONTRACTOR SERVICES THE UK’S FLEXIBLE WORKFORCE IS AGAIN UNDER THE TAX-AVOIDANCE SPOTLIGHT — BUT IS THIS FAIR?

INSIGHT

SMART RESOURCING

Turning to the ARMS race to compete for talent in the fast-changing world of recruitment

Training, engaging, leading and implementing: all in a day’s work to improve your recruiting

Recruitment Matters 06/03/2013 12:50

Perfect. You have roles that are vacant. We have readers who arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.

Talk to the best candidates, talk to us Call 0203 353 3401 or email jobs@guardian.co.uk

web print tablet mobile

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Contents 32

Have you noticed that there’s a lot of noise out there? Love it or loathe it, and often both, social media has a lot to answer for. The rise of social media has in turn led to the rise of the democratisation of public forums; everyone has a chance to talk… and talk more… and louder. To the extent that it often seems as though no one listens to anyone else talk; today it’s all about getting oneself heard. There was good reason to listen at Recruiter’s recent Smart Resourcing 2013 conference, sponsored by Eploy. Listening led to insight, learning and, in the words of one in-house resourcing professional, “renewed passion for what I do”. If you couldn’t be there or want to revisit some of what you heard on the day from the line-up of amazing keynote speaker John Vlastelica and innovative recruiting and resourcing practitioners — or “some of the best recruitment minds” as another attendee described them — see our capsule coverage of presentations on pp6-7 and p12 and on recruiter.co.uk. In-house resourcing pro Shailendra Jaisingha is a new contributor to Recruiter this month and his practical, well-thought out advice and insight give new meaning to the expression, the ARMS race. See his methods for winning that talent war on p24.

NEWS 5

Capita partners with the British Army... … to recruit at a new national centre

Smart Resourcing 2013 We report from the conference for in-house recruitment professionals 6 Do your metrics add any

value to your recruiting? What drives your staff? Manage the hiring managers 7 RAF brand is ‘invisible’ 8 Tech & tools 10 Special Report 6 7

28 COVER STORY Russell Clements: what lies ahead for the former CEO of SThree? 32 Contractor services Unclear signals for contractors as the government cracks down on off-payroll workers

REGULARS 18 21 21 24

Exclusive insight into The FIRM’s research on in-house recruiters

ANALYSIS 12 News Analysis Is Big Data the next big thing for recruitment? 14 Sector Analysis Human resources 17 Global Spotlight on Australia 12

Scan here to get your own copy of Recruiter

FEATURES

Soapbox Soundbites Letters/Web chat Insight Using Agile Recruiting Methodologies — ARMS — to get talent

26 The Challenge SThree and Hornbill 38 Movers & Shakers Industry moves 42 Bloggers with Bite

WHO’S HIRING? 39 40 41 41

Ruth Moran JPA Recruiter Republic STR

EDITORIAL Editor: DeeDee Doke T: +44 (0)20 7880 7601 deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk Senior reporter: Colin Cottell T: +44 (0)20 7880 7603 colin.cottell@recruiter.co.uk Reporter: Sam Burne James T: +44 (0)20 7880 7606 sam.burnejames@recruiter.co.uk Contributing writer: Sue Weekes Production editor: Vanessa Townsend T: +44 (0)20 7880 7602 vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk Art editor: Adrian Taylor ADVERTISING Advertising director: Andy Daniel T: +44 (0)20 7880 7607 andy.daniel@recruiter.co.uk Recruitment sales executive: David Rix T: +44 (0)20 7880 7608 david.rix@redactive.co.uk Fax +44 (0)20 7880 7553 PRODUCTION Deputy production manager: Kieran Tobin T: +44 (0)20 7880 6240 kieran.tobin@redactive.co.uk PUBLISHING Publishing director: Anne Sadler T: +44 (0)20 7880 6213 anne.sadler@redactive.co.uk RECRUITER AWARDS Events: Juliette Bond T: +44 (0)20 7324 2771 juliette.bond@redactive.co.uk CIRCULATION and SUBSCRIPTIONS To receive a regular copy of Recruiter, the leading magazine for recruitment and resourcing professionals, telephone +44 (0)20 8950 9117 or email recruiter@alliance-media.co.uk • To purchase reprints or multiple copies of the magazine, contact Andy Daniel T: +44 (0)20 7880 7607

Total average net circulation between 1 July 2011 & 30 June 2012 – 17,838. Recruiter is also sent to all REC members R d ti M Redactive Media di Group 17-18 Britton Street London EC1M 5TP

CONTRIBUTIONS Contributions are invited, but when not accepted will be returned only if accompanied by a fully stamped and addressed envelope. Articles should be emailed. No responsibility can be taken for drawings, photographs or literary contributions during delivery, transmission or in the editor’s hands. © 2013 Redactive Media Group. All rights reserved. This publication (and any part thereof) may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in print or electronic format (including but not limited to any online service, any database or any part of the internet) or in any other format in any media whatsoever, without the prior written permission of Redactive Media Group. Redactive Media Group accepts no liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein. The publishers cannot accept liability for any loss arising from the late appearance or non-publication of any advertisement for any reason whatsoever. ISSN 1475-7478

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RECRUITER

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06/03/2013 11:25

News

CAPITA PARTNERS ARMY TO RECRUIT AT NATIONAL CENTRE

The new centre, which will be home to 220 Capita staff, working alongside staff from the Army Recruiting Group, is due to open on 26 March. Under the 10-year RPP contract, Capita is responsible for the operational aspects of candidate attraction and recruitment, however the Army retains responsibility for policy, selection criteria and standards. Brigadier Andrew Jackson, director of recruiting and training (Operations) for the British Army, told Recruiter the new centre would modernise the recruitment process by allowing better exploitation of channels such as social media, allow online psychometric testing and medical testing, as

SHUTTERSTOCK

This month sees the launch of the British Army’s National Recruiting Centre. The new centre in Upavon, Wiltshire is one of the first results of the Recruitment Partnering Project (RPP), a £44m a year agreement between the Army and Capita.

well as providing candidates with more career information. Candidates will be allocated to a named recruiter at the centre. Jackson said managing candidates centrally also “removes that burden from the out-stations and Army recruiting offices that we relied on previously, so that people can be treated more as an individual.” Jackson explained the new structure would reduce the amount of time spent by Army recruiters around the country doing administration, and increase face time with candidates, such as outreach work, selection events and interviews. Shaun King, managing director of the

DEA ‘FILLS IN-HOUSE NICHE’ The Direct Employers Association (DEA), the newly-launched trade body for corporate recruiter employers, fills a specific niche that is not met by other membership organisations within the recruitment and staffing sector, according to its chairman. Colin Minto, chairman of the DEA’s executive committee and head of resourcing at security company G4S, told Recruiter that the body that officially launched last month existed “to fill a niche” that was not being filled by any other organisation. Minto said he saw the DEA as championing the cause of corporate recruiter employers and highlighting the role in-house recruiters play. Educating all those involved in the various stages of the recruitment journey, including the supply chain and jobseekers, as well as working with government, were also key parts of its role. “The aim is to influence the external factors of the environment so all the stakeholders

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get the best out of the recruitment process,” said Minto. When Recruiter suggested that a trade body for in-house recruiters, The FIRM, already existed, Minto responded: “The Colin Minto FIRM is not a trade association, they are obviously a community and networking organisation.” Co-founder of The Forum for In-House Recruitment Managers (The FIRM), Gary Franklin, responded: “Our aspirations are and always have been to be a trade body — to be the representative body for in-house recruiters in much the same way as the CIPD is recognised as the trade body for HR practitioners.” However, he continued: “Any organisation that has been created to better understand and better help provide best practice within the HR recruitment community is worthwhile. There is room for everyone to provide a better direction, a better clarity of the importance of in-house recruitment.” COLIN COTTELL

RPP within Capita, told Recruiter that the project, which also covers recruitment for the Territorial Army (TA) has already begun to have an effect. A marketing campaign featuring live footage from the frontline in Afghanistan has lead to a doubling of interest in joining the Territorial Army, said King. The ‘TA Live’ TV ad campaign in February featured TA soldiers working alongside regulars in Afghanistan in a variety of situations. King said the doubling of interest had been “pretty much right across the board”. Jackson explained that by 2018, the aim was to produce an integrated force of 112,000 within the Army, including a reserve component of around 30,000 who would have around two years’ training under their belts by then. For more on how the RPP is transforming Army recruitment, see the April issue of Recruiter. COLIN COTTELL

DRILLING FOR SERVICE LEAVERS One industry where the skills of exservicemen and women are most welcome is oil & gas, in offshore and subsea specialisms in particular. The UK subsea business of oilfield services firm Aker Solutions employs over 100 forces leavers. Division managing director Matt Corbin said they were “a very good match” for a high-risk environment where things “can’t go wrong”. Such candidates, he added, were not “treated in any special way… no different to any other recruit”. Chris Finnigan is a senior health, safety and environment manager at Ceona, undertaking construction and projects in the oil & gas industry. Previously in the army’s Royal Engineers Corps, he said his service “gave me many of the technical skills needed for offshore projects, but it also prepared me for the structures and hierarchies of a commercial organisation”. The Ministry of Defence’s Career Transition Partnership has hosted several oil-specific careers events for service people in the past 18 months, each attracting hundreds of jobseekers, with such hiring expected to grow in line with industry requirements. SAM BURNE JAMES

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News

Random thoughts from recruiter.co.uk, Twitter and beyond…

“LinkedIn is very much a platform for search; we also believe Facebook is one for broadcast” PAUL CONNOLLY, ACCOUNT DIRECTOR, WORK4 LABS

ALL PHOTOS: SAM KESTEVEN

In-house recruiters from a wide range of private and public sector organisations gathered in London at Recruiter’s Smart Resourcing 2013 conference, sponsored by Eploy, to listen and learn from leading thinker John Vlastelica in a keynote talk sponsored by Jobsite, and practitioners in the field of resourcing and recruiting, to network with fellow professionals and go 2 Steps Beyond

Events University of London Spring Graduate Fair 20 March, Senate House, London springgradfair.co.uk

The Future of Work: The Student Voice, organised by Bright Futures 18 April, Aston Villa Football Club, Birmingham bit.ly/bright-future-workevent

Recruiter Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy BOOK YOUR TABLE NOW! 1 May, Grosvenor House Hotel, London recruiterawards.co.uk

Employment, Apprenticeships and Skills Conference, organised by GovKnow 16 May, Strand Palace Hotel, London govknow.com/events

APSCo Recruitment Challenge Cup Football Festival In aid of Childline 19 May, Hackney Marshes, London bit.ly/apsco-football

The Economist Talent Management Summit 2013 21 May, London Marriott Hotel Economistconferences2013. co.uk

FOR MORE NEWS AND COMMENTS, GO ONLINE

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ARE YOUR METRICS OF ANY VALUE? Catherine Possamai, director of internal resourcing at Capita, challenged delegates at Smart Resourcing 2013 to ask themselves whether the metrics and information their in-house resourcing teams provide to senior executives told those leaders what they really need to know. Based on her own experiences at Capita, Possamai questioned whether historic metrics, such as costof-hire and time-to-hire, were of any real value to C-suite executives. “The fact is that in Capita, stats like cost-per-hire and time-to-hire are really pretty meaningless to a senior executive. “They are interested in growth, in delivering value to their customer, and they need to know how to influence what comes next.” Metrics such as cost-per-hire were historic rather than focused on future actions, she added. “I challenge you all to ask yourselves: is the kind of metrics and the stuff you are giving to your HR directors really of use to the CFO, CEO and COO?,” she said. In place of these metrics, Possamai highlighted the importance of in-house recruiters focusing on the needs of the business’s customers rather than

internal metrics. “It is not just what Capita wants to achieve but what Capita’s customers want to achieve that we need to understand,” she said. She explained this was an important aspect of the ongoing transformation of Capita’s internal resourcing team from Catherine Possamai a “bums on seats” operation, which was regarded internally as “transactional” to a strategic resourcing partner. Possamai outlined a number of case studies, illustrating how the resourcing function now focused on delivering business outcomes for Capita’s clients, including the BBC, who had outsourced the collection of the TV licence fee to Capita. She explained how the requirement of the BBC to increase TV licence fee revenue had led them to change the type of people they hired. “Now we need to recruit Rottweilers,” she said. COLIN COTTELL

WHAT DRIVES YOUR STAFF? EMPLOYERS LOOKING to attract potential recruits should identify what their •existing staff enjoy about their work and why they work there, Ryan Broad, global

head of recruitment at the Moving Picture Company (MPC), told delegates at the conference. When building their proposition to potential staff, “you have to pin back your communication to their primal instinct to what is driving that person”, Broad advised. He added that it was from “uncovering these insights that organisations are able Ryan Broad to deliver relevant [marketing] content and get it out into the marketplace”. Broad said he had identiﬁed three core reasons why people want to work in MPC. These were: working on the movies, the technology — “really cool stuff”, and that their friends worked there. Broad said once all three elements are in place “they are pretty much engaged and you can get hold of them”. He described how MPC’s marketing message, which was largely transmitted by social and professional media, been distilled into two key elements: “Be part of something that is going to be bigger, be part of a legacy, which is the movies” and “you can be yourself”. In conclusion, he told the audience: “MPC is made up of a number of talented, diverse individuals, working together with a common purpose to get the movies out the door.” COLIN COTTELL

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News

“I think sometimes people do direct sourcing for the sake of direct sourcing, without thinking what a quality agency can do”

“Our strength remains a combination of our size, our boutique identity and an unrivalled knowledge of the creative industry”

JAMES BALLARD, CO-FOUNDER, ANNAPURNA HR

JACK GRATTON ON MAJOR PLAYERS’ MBO

“There are more ‘umbrella company’ schemes in our sights like the one FSC proposed” GANGMASTERS LICENSING AUTHORITY TAKES ON UNLAWFUL T&S SCHEMES

MANAGE THE HIRING MANAGERS Hiring managers are not your customers — they are your partners, and sometimes you have to confront them, Smart Resourcing keynote speaker John Vlastelica, managing director of consulting and training firm Recruiting Toolbox, told delegates. But while “sometimes you have to say ‘no’”, Vlastelica suggested that one way to limit the potential damage from confrontations with hiring managers was to manage their expectations upfront, so that any delays in the recruitment process, for example, didn’t come out of the blue. Recruiters should also explain to hiring managers the consequences of their actions, such as not providing prompt feedback on candidates. Being prepared to confront hiring managers was just one way that in-house recruiters could elevate themselves from simply being recruiters into leaders, Vlastelica added. He outlined seven other key points by which recruiters could transform their status: • pressing buttons. “Everything you do should be connected to what hiring managers care about, which is speed and quality, not compliance, not costs and not source of hire.” • missionary work. Leaders build demand within

the organisation. One way to do this was to identify what you want to achieve. • ask better questions. For example, which are the key roles that drive your business? John Vlastelica “Not all requisitions and vacancies are created equal. If you don’t fill the critical jobs then you have failed as a recruiter.” • diagnosis. Get to the roots of issues. For example, if a member of your team is under-performing can this be fixed by training, or are they good at their job but just being asked to do too much? • partnerships. The three most important are with finance, HR business partners and compensation professionals. • strategy. “If it is not actionable, then I am not interested in it.” He explained that good strategy has numbers such as timelines built into it. • do more than just fill job requisitions. Work on projects that make a real competitive difference to the organisation.

Smart comments “It’s great to confirm that you are doing good things as well, because you can sit in a bubble and not look outside at what is happening in other organisations.”

Yvonne Foster, head of resourcing at The Cooperative Banking Group. “It was great – you can go to a lot of events like this and they don’t have too much integrity but this one actually stood out for me”

David Brammer, UK manager – professional resourcing, Boots “It’s a fantastic way to keep up to date with the industry and to learn more about the current trends and what our clients are looking for.”

Amanda le Gros,marketing executive, CV Library

RAF BRAND ‘INVISIBLE’

IT’S GOOD TO BE SCARED

The Royal Air Force (RAF) struggles with brand identity in the public eye where the Army dominates the perception of the UK military. From the colours of aircraft and combat uniforms to generalised references to “troops”, a term which more Gp Cpt Ian Tolfts specifically means soldiers, the RAF is often invisible alongside its sister service, Group Captain Recruiting Ian Tolfts said. The public and media “think that because aircraft are painted green, they are Army”, Tolfts said. A particularly annoying example of the misconception was the regular media reference to “troops” beefing up the security operations at the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics when the RAF made up a significant part of that contingent. “Half of my recruiters had to spend two months with the Games last year,” Tolfts said. The RAF’s invisibility is exacerbated by the rural locations of its air bases, which are more appropriate for runways. “The RAF is not in the public space,” Tolfts said.

WHEN EXPANDING a recruitment operation into pastures new, “don’t be scared to be surprised”, said Andy Hill, the vice president of talent and resourcing at advanced technologies ﬁrm Invensys, delivering a session entitled ‘Growing a global recruitment team’. And spearheading recruitment at a ﬁrm employing over 20,000 people in 128 countries, he should know. “You have to have people on the ground,” he said. “You think you come from a position of experience and then when you really start to touch the geography, it’s scary.” In China, for example, he said it can be “quite scary” that you can’t read the social and digital recruiting platforms that Invensys uses, and they are completely different to what is seen in the West. Another surprise came from Asia. “Everyone thinks about direct sourcing as something that happens in the US and Europe,” but uptake has been strong in that market, because there was “no legacy to deal with” in terms of a history of agency use. Hill said it is important to understand different cultural psyches — from informal Australians (see p17 for more) to “super formal” South-East Asians who “won’t ask me any questions”, and colleagues in India who “tell me they’re going to do it all right away”. Hill recommends that when visiting sites, “don’t book yourself into a posh hotel… [and] spend as much time as you can out there”.

DEEDEE DOKE

SAM BURNE JAMES

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•

“I’ve been in recruitment six years now and it’s been a great refresher, really great to see how other recruiters work.”

Pamela Bwona, senior recruiter, Hogarth Worldwide ‘Hiring managers are NOT your customers, they’re your partners. Help them succeed vs make them happy’ @vlastelica #smartresourcing2013

@JobsiteUK Excellent line-up and slick organisation at today’s #smartresourcing event. Congratulations to @ editordeedee and everyone involved.

@WorkLabinsights Big data, it’s not the size it’s what you do with it that counts! #SmartResourcing

@SophMack (see also p12)

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News

Tech & tools

INTEGRATION PROVIDES TWO-WAY ONESTOP SHOP AS WELL AS LINKING WITH BROADBEAN, VACANCY SHARING SITE THEJOBPOST IS LOOKING FOR FURTHER INTEGRATION heJobPost.co.uk, which allows employers to connect with recruitment consultancies and vice versa, has just completed its integration with Broadbean. It means that Broadbean users can post their vacancies to TheJobPost using their Broadbean account as and when they require agency support, and TheJobPost users can post out to the job boards if they have a Broadbean account. Further integration will follow and TheJobPost chief executive officer John Paul Caffery told Recruiter that its strategy also includes working with human capital firms in the US ahead of its launch there next year. This includes the likes of Glassdoor, the job and career community site based in Sausalito, San Francisco that is well-known for its employee-generated content. “With the number of significant players in the human capital sector based over in the US, our plan is to work with more and more platforms like Glassdoor,” said Caffery, “to both integrate further solutions into TheJobPost and build strong relationships, enabling us to accelerate into that market much more quickly.” TheJobPost describes itself as “an open access job aggregator” and provides employers with access to candidates from a large number of agencies, and recruitment agencies access to a large number of employers. When an employer places a vacancy anonymously, it is matched to the recruitment agencies that are best equipped to help them. Agencies can then put forward their candidates but only after they have gone through a stringent matching process. TheJobPost currently has 34,000

registered UK recruitment consultants using the site, and the daily fees available to them amount to £1.6m. Although the bulk of activity on TheJobPost.co.uk concerns agencies, it also allows employers to take a direct sourcing route via integration with services such as LinkedIn and indeed Broadbean, and the company recently staged a social recruiting conference aimed at in-house recruiters. Caffery said that while he believed direct sourcing was growing fast and becoming increasingly important to businesses, the sheer number of sourcing channels open to employers means they need more education and help to decide which one to use. “It means an employer could be approached with 30 different technologies and sourcing channels that seem to all do the same thing,” he said. “Going back 10-15 years there were only a couple of valid options to choose from but now there are just too many to properly evaluate. Employers need to think more carefully about what sourcing channels to use, what not to use and most importantly when to use them.” www.TheJobPost.co.uk

Matching service built for construction industry A new free recruitment matching site has officially launched for the construction industry. MyJobHomePage.com, which initially focuses on the South of England, provides a percentage match score of a candidates suitability to a role. Managing director Ashley Hurrell, who previously worked in construction and property recruitment, told Recruiter that the matching algorithm behind the site has been in development for a number of years. “I believe recruitment agencies are needed for specialist, hard-to-fill roles but there are

also a lot of roles in the construction industry that can be matched using this algorithm,” he said. “It’s about helping construction companies save money and therefore helping them to grow.” Among those employers to sign up to the service is house builder Barratt. It is free to both direct employers and jobseekers, and its revenue will come through featured advertising.

New tool gives SEO snapshot Recruitment firms can obtain a clearer picture of how their website will be viewed by Google and other search engines courtesy of a new free search engine optimisation (SEO) auditing tool. Its developer, Andy Drinkwater, spent many years working in SEO-related roles in the recruitment industry, largely at the agency directory, Agency Central. He told Recruiter that with Google issuing around 50 releases and updates to its algorithms every month, he wanted to create a tool that would help recruiters gain more visibility and control of their site. “The SEO market is unregulated and I wanted to do something that didn’t pull at the pursestrings but rather gave everyone the chance to see what was taking place on their site,” said Drinkwater, who set up the specialist consultancy iNet SEO in 2012. iNet SEO derives no direct revenue from the tool but can offer its services if organisations require it. In many cases, however, Drinkwater said the tool will provide them with sufficient information to make amendments to the site. Use of it requires no sign-up Andy Drinkwater and a recruiter simply enters its website URL. The tool then looks for key SEO factors such as the page title, description, number of backlinks, number of internal links and other elements that will make a difference to a ranking on Google. It also provides information on why, for instance, a page title or description is useful for optimisation. “On the whole, many people know they need to do something to better optimise their site, but not how,” said Drinkwater. He went on to explain that if a recruitment firm does experience a drop in traffic, the problem may simply stem from a change in the algorithms. “A case in point is Google Panda, which was introduced to target sites which heavily advertised other people’s services,” he explained. “But it’s evolved and if you’ve got what is seen as a ‘thin content’ page which doesn’t have much worth to anyone, that one page is enough to drag your whole site down the rankings.” Drinkwater concluded: “There’s quite a fine line between where there’s enough and too much. But if you write great content which is aimed at the user rather than Google, you are pretty much on to a winner.” The audit tool can be accessed at www. inetseo.co.uk/audit

www.myjobhomepage.com SUE WEEKES

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News

SPECIAL REPORT

Contract News Cezanne Software: The HR software firm has been acquired by French company Lefebvre Software… Elwood Staffing: The US temp staffing network has acquired recruiter SOS Employment Group… Future First: The alumni networks provider has partnered with Barclays to provide the banking group better access to state school candidates… Harvey Nash: The Royal Bank of Scotland has increased the capacity of the recruitment group’s funding facilities from £40m to £52m… The Jacobson Group: Insurance executive search firm ejsSearch has been merged into the insurance recruitment brand… LinkedIn: The social network will provide its Talent Solutions tool to UAE-headquartered telecoms firm Etisalat… Major Players: A management buy-out has seen the creative and marketing recruiter leave Randstad…

ManpowerGroup: Norwegian construction recruiter Workshop Bemanning & Kompetanse has been acquired by the global staffing group… Randstad: The recruitment group is to auto-enrol 20,000 temps through NOW: Pensions… Saongroup: The Dublin-based recruiter has acquired Chinese recruitment group ChinaHR.com… SEEK: The job site is working alongside the Australian government on the state Resources Sector Job Board… Spencer Ogden: The energy recruiter is to manage an RPO contract for mining firm Kalumbila Minerals’s Sentinel mining project in Zambia… TrueBlue: The US blue collar staffing specialist has acquired general staffing firm MDT… USG Energy: Recruiter USG People has sold its energy brand to private equity firm Rabo Capital

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IN-HOUSE RECRUITERS CITE DIRECT SOURCING AS TOP PRIORITY IN 2013 Direct sourcing is the top recruiting priority for in-house recruiters in 2013, according to the 2012-13 survey of members of The Forum for InHouse Recruitment Managers (The FIRM). With direct sourcing cited by 79% of the respondents as their top priority, the survey pinpointed employer brand and talent pooling as the second and third highest priorities at, respectively, 56% and 51%. Cost reduction came in at fourth at 39%. However, as The FIRM co-founder Emma Mirrington (below) acknowledged in an exclusive interview with Recruiter, cost reduction overlaps not only with direct sourcing but other priorities cited by respondents such as building recruitment capability, reducing time to hire and manpower planning. More than 70% of the survey’s 279 respondents from 246 unique organisations were based in the UK, with most of the remainder located in Europe and the US, Mirrington said. Increasing interest in future talent programmes was another key trend identified in the survey. Results revealed an increase from 54% to 65% in recruiters’ use of graduate programmes and a rise from 15% to 38% of respondents having school leaver programmes. “It’s encouraging especially to see the number of school leaver programmes growing. It’s great to see our members are rising to that challenge,” Mirrington said. The greatest increases in school leaver programmes occurred in the retail and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sectors. When asked about their anticipated level of recruitment in 2013 compared to 2012, 50% of respondents predicted that it would remain about the same, with 10% predicting decreases. The remaining 40% expect to step up recruiting in 2013, although 17% expected hiring to increase by no more than 10%. However, the percentages of recruiters who expect their levels of recruiting to drop may actually reflect a trend toward ward internal talent mobility “as a cost reduction ion method”, the survey analysis said. When asked if internal mobility was not considered recruitment, itment, Mirrington said: “That’s a really interesting question, and I think it varies depending on which hich organisation you’re speaking ing to. Internal mobility within some organisations comes under er the recruiting function whereas eas in others it hasn’t done.” Recruitment budgets reflected eflected a slight fall between 2012 and nd 2013. For instance, 54% have budgets udgets of £501k or more this year compared with 60% of respondents in 2012. “The biggest budgets sit within the banking industry,” Mirrington rrington said. “Banking was also the he most likely function to outsource ce its

recruitment. Retail has the lowest cost-perhire, smallest budget and highest volumes in terms of recruiting.” With regard to outsourcing, 71% of respondents do not currently outsource all or part of their recruitment, while another 7% are not now but are considering it. Asked if recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) was not considered in the same light as recruitment agencies, Mirrington said: “RPO can be the perfect accompaniment [to direct sourcing]. Lots of RPO teams are actually embedded within client organisations so absolutely the focus is on driving the client employer brand and, from the candidate perspective, often the divide is seamless, and they won’t actually be aware that they are dealing with an outsourced provider; they [think they are] dealing with the client.” Mirrington went on to say that The FIRM was seeing “a lot” of its members “move from completely in-house roles to RPO organisations and back again. So I think that when we look at in-house recruitment, we would very much encompass the RPO model within that, if they’re embedded and sit on the client site”. Survey findings around online recruitment services showed that recruiters were almost three times as likely to use aggregators such as Indeed and Jobrapido than they were to use fixed-fee recruitment sites or online recruitment marketplaces. The analysis attributed the increased use of aggregators to “maybe an attempt to cast a wider net at lower cost for potential candidates as a response to tightened budgets and an increased focus on direct sourcing”. “The only trends that we’d really identified around job boards is that recruiters are getting better at using analytics to inform their decisions around which ones they the were using in terms of tracking, return o on investment, etc,” Mirrington M rrington said. Mi “So we felt they were probably t reducing the number of job boards they n were using b because they had better over which were giving visibility ov best returns. People are them the b more savvy, recruitment being m budgets are tighter, and bud there’s an increasing focus on th analytics,” she said. an The survey was the second membership survey se of o its kind conducted on behalf of The FIRM by Enhance Media. DEEDEE DOKE

• For more on the survey, see s recruiter.co.uk

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

07/03/2013 16:14

SPECIAL REPORT

Other ﬁndings of The FIRM’s annual survey were:

Within your organisation, do recruitment budgets sit with…? • 55% HR • 28% Line manager • 17% Elsewhere

of those in-house recruiters surveyed by The FIRM do not currently outsource all or part of their recruitment, while 7% of those who do not currently outsource are considering it in the future

How many vacancies did your organisation ﬁll in 2012? • 0-50, 8% • 51-100, 9% • 101-500, 40% • 501-1,000, 18% • 1,001-5,000, 18% • Over 5,000, 8%

TOP

How many vacancies does your organisation expect to ﬁll in 2013? • 0-50, 8% • 51-100, 8% • 101-500, 41% • 501-1,000, 17% • 1,001-5,000, 17% • Over 5,000 9%

How many different job boards do you currently use? • None 6% • 1-2 30% • 3-5 42% • 6-9 13% • 10 or more 10% Compared with 2011, there was a decline of 28% in the number of respondents that use ﬁve or more job boards, and over three quarters of those surveyed stated that they were using fewer than ﬁve job boards. How many different CV databases do you currently use? • None 28% • 1-2 50% • 3-5 18% • 6-9 1% • 10 or more 2%

Graduate recruitment consultants

2. Better Placed , Talent manager

3. Eighty Twenty,

Learning and Development Trainer

4. Hudson, Learning and

Development Adviser

5. Recruiter Republic,

Recruitment consultant – graduate trainee

TOP

Experian Hitwise most popular websites employment and training sites — February 2013 Percentage reflects share of visits to most visited sites

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

LinkedIn Indeed UK reed.co.uk Totaljobs.com jobrapido UK TES Connect Jobsite UK NHS Jobs CV-Library Monster UK Guardian.co.uk Jobs Job is Job United Kingdom Direct Gov - Universal Jobmatch Simply Hired ﬁsh4jobs JobsToday Careerbuilder.co.uk trovit UK Jobs jobs.ac.uk s1jobs.com

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MOST VIEWED ARTICLES ONLINE

1. Compensation for

Barnet Council workers left in dark over AWR

2. Heineken finds recruit

with quite some bottle

3. Adecco leads reduced recruitment cohort in Best Companies list

4. Mars tempts graduate talent with tweets for treats

5. Recruiters under

pressure to operate T&S schemes

RECRUITER

MARCH 2013

07/03/2013 16:14

News Analysis

THE NEXT BIG THING TO CHANGE THE WAY RECRUITMENT IS DONE

CREDIT: ISTOCK

Last month a panel of experts at Recruiter’s Smart Resourcing 2013 conference, sponsored by Eploy, explored the challenges faced by recruiters when faced with the overwhelming tide of Big Data. Colin Cottell reports

he world is awash with data — so much so that the term Big Data has been coined. And Big Data continues to get even bigger. It is estimated that digital data production will be 44 times greater in 2020 than it was in 2009. Recruiters are in danger of being overwhelmed by a bewildering variety of data including relatively new sources, such as social media, videos and professional networks. Making the most of this massive tide of data, while understanding and managing the challenges and risks involved, was the subject of a panel discussion at Recruiter’s Smart Resourcing 2013 conference, sponsored by Eploy, in London last month. Catherine Possamai, director of internal resourcing at Capita, highlighted the potential benefits for those recruiters that can turn this tide to their own advantage. She described figures recently produced by talent measurement solutions firm SHL, showing that only 10% of graduates recruited in the past five years have the potential to be leaders, as “a jawdropping moment”, which illustrated how raw data can be transformed into valuable nuggets of business intelligence. For Possamai, the ability to use data in an intelligent fashion is a key differentiator for organisations. “Data is the sword of the 21st century and those who wield it well are Samurai,” she said quoting Jonathan Rosenberg, a former senior vice president at Google. Those on the panel at Smart Resourcing 2013 were: Chris Bogh, founding director, Eploy Roopesh Panchasra, director, recruitment, Expedia Catherine Possami, director of internal resourcing, Capita Mike Wall, managing director Jobsite.co.uk, part of digital recruitment group Evenbase Jonathan Young, head of workforce strategy, analytics and talent acquisition at Lockheed Martin DeeDee Doke, Recruiter editor, chaired the panel

Key facts What is Big Data? In IT, Big Data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. Challenges include capture, curating, storage, search, sharing, analysis and visualisation. Source: Wikipedia It includes a whole range of relatively new unstructured data such as photos, video and social media, a big shift away from traditional relational databases. More than 70% of the digital universe is generated by individuals. But enterprises have responsibility for the storage, protection and management of 80%. It is estimated that by 2020 the amount of data in existence will reach 35 Zettabytes (zb). A zb is a thousand million times greater than a Terrabyte, which is roughly the equivalent of 210 single-sided DVDs. Source: CSC, a global technology company

She explained that by using existing performance data, correlating it with data from applicant tracking systems (ATSs) and HR systems to understand what good looks like, changes to the recruitment process could be made that ultimately fed through into higher performing staff and better client business outcomes. Roopesh Panchasra, director of recruitment at Expedia, agreed that the extra layers of information, such as where people go on holiday, pastimes and interests “is going to change the way we go about doing recruitment” as it allows you “to make more calculated decisions”. However, he questioned whether this necessarily meant better decisions. “That is the biggest debate because it can cause discrimination,” he said. Mike Wall, managing director of Jobsite.co.uk, part of digital recruitment group Evenbase, gave an example of how US college students were being forced to ditch courses on the basis of psychometric tests, indicating the course they were on didn’t suit them. “Is that right or wrong? Data is being used arguably completely to the extreme,” he said. However, “it seems to be successful as people are enjoying their [new] courses”, he added. Jonathan Young, head of workforce strategy, analytics and talent acquisition at Lockheed Martin, said that greater transparency raised important questions for recruiters, such as where to draw the line between what is an individual’s personal data and what is of legitimate interest to recruiters. “It’s a judgement call,” he said. Young said a related issue was whether recruiters were “mature enough to make that decision”. He argued that recruiters were at an “embryonic stage” in understanding the implications of Big Data. Chris Bogh, founding director of Eploy, agreed that recruiters had yet to utilise the huge amounts of data collected in the early stages of the recruitment process. Possamai added that “the tricky bit” was “gaining access to where the data is hidden”, noting that this was both expensive and difficult to implement. However, Young saw an opportunity for recruiters and HR. “Yes, the numbers are there, but it is the analysis, the viewpoint and the experience that we bring that will justify our place at the table, and not the data and the nuggets we find in that data,” he said. The era of Big Data has arrived, and is here to stay. Rather than being swamped by it, there are opportunities for recruiters who can tap into it to do their jobs better. However, the full benefits are only likely to be realised if resources are put into analysing the data, and if issues around data privacy and discrimination can be resolved.

“Data is the sword of the 21st century and those who wield it well are Samurai”

RECRUITER

MARCH 2013

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Human Resources AUSTERITY HAS FORCED HR TO BE MORE COMMERCIALLY MINDED AND TECHNOLOGY HAS CONTRIBUTED TO MAKING THIS HAPPEN — A VIRTUOUS CIRCLE IS IN PLACE

Recruitment agencies report steady but far from overwhelming demand across the HR market as a whole, with some saying contract and interim roles have picked up the slack where permanent hiring has slowed.

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Stephen Menko, the director of HR recruiter Ortus, picks out three particularly strong sectors: oil & gas, retail and financial services, with reward, and compensation & benefits skills in particular demand in the latter sector. Meanwhile, Emma-Claire Kavanagh, head of HR at interim and executive recruiter Eton Bridge Partners, sees demand increasing for learning & development and talent management experts across her markets. “The economy is showing signs of recovery and the challenge for businesses now is how they retain their top talent,” she says. “Recruiting commercially-focused learning and talent specialists is a signal that career development, succession planning and training is important and they are prepared to invest in their employees’ future potential.” Indeed, Claire McCartney, a research adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD), calls employee engagement — “getting the best from employees in difficult times… building trust” — a crucial skill. Getting the best from staff across the business and getting the best out of HR teams means the clever use of technology. Also saying rewards and HR analytics professionals are “very much in demand”, James Ballard, one of the founders of HR recruiter

THE ECONOMY IS SHOWING SIGNS OF RECOVERY … THE CHALLENGE FOR BUSINESSES NOW IS HOW THEY RETAIN THEIR TOP TALENT

Annapurna HR, tells Recruiter that the firm has spent the last 18 months mapping out talent able to work with Software-as-a-Service (Saas) product Workday. Oracle’s Fusion, he says, is next. “I think we are ahead of the curve,” he says, “but it’s no secret that recruiters need to build specialised talent pools in those areas.” At SAP, the business enterprise software provider’s UK & Ireland HR director Laura Burton tells Recruiter: “We’ve automated a lot of our processes, a lot of the more transactional [HR] work as such has been streamlined and we’ve continued to automate more year-in, year-out, freeing up time for the HR business partners to be more strategic.” Having what Burton calls “financially commercial strengths” and the ability to work strategically and partner with the business are the top priorities for her HR team, she says, alongside building organisational design capability. Thiloni Fothergill, an HR talent acquisition business partner at consumer brand Kellogg’s, goes further, saying that her firm would thus demand in HR recruits “the gravitas to be recognised as one of the business function’s leadership teams — influencing and inspiring at all levels throughout the structure”. Another recurring feature, though more prominently seen in last year’s HR Sector Analysis (Recruiter, February 2012), is HR people who are in Fothergill’s words “experts in dealing with and guiding business areas through ever changing environments and cultures”. While skilled professionals expert in any number of areas in HR — and beyond — seem to be in short supply, Fothergill’s answer to Recruiter’s question of whether the people they need are available is that “they are available if we think and attract differently from the traditional places”. Innovation is very much the name of the game for both HR and HR recruitment.

Stakeholder Comment Laura Burton HR director (UK & Ireland), SAP “It’s really important we have a lot of different people from all levels in SAP that will go on into HR, because I think it gives them the full spectrum of the business, and I also think it really helps HR because it gives them the understanding and the importance of what we’re doing.”

Thiloni Fothergill UK HR talent acquisition business partner, Kellogg’s “In order to have an effective recruitment strategy talent acquisition and talent management need to be linked. Talent pipelining can only be done effectively when HR and talent acquisition work in partnership.”

Claire McCartney Research adviser, CIPD “The signs are that more organisations are focusing on retention because they’re starting to think that people may be starting to look for jobs… [it had been] quite a low priority in recent years.”

Stephen Menko Director, Ortus “Demand has declined for recruiters and generalists, there’s increased demand for reward people, especially with regulatory and FSA professional experience, and also comps & bens and L&D.”

SAM BURNE JAMES sam.burnejames@recruiter.co.uk

WHAT KEEPS YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT?

JOBS, VIEWS, ETC ■ Jobs (000s)* ■ Applicants/job* ■ New CVs (000s)**

25 20 15 10 5 0

RECRUITER

2012

MARCH 2013

14_Recruit_SectorAnalysis_mar 2013.indd Sec3:14

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

■ Leadership capability ■ Economic uncertainty ■ Ensuring you have the skills and talent you need ■ Delivering on priorities with a limited budget ■ Managing your cost base

HR leaders

Business leaders

HR SALARIES HR business partner: £48,113 (▼£247 since 2012) Learning & development: £38,974 (▼£690) HR advisor: £30,148 (▼£196) HR administrator: £22,990 (▼£489) Average (all roles): £36,344 (▼£988)

HR SALARIES FROM REED.CO.UK. HR PRIORITIES FROM CIPD HR OUTLOOK WINTER 2012-13

Sector Analysis

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07/03/2013 10:39

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06/03/2013 11:57

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06/03/2013 11:29

Market Indicators

Global Spotlight on Australia For the last few years, the Australian Open tennis tournament has marketed itself ‘The Grand Slam of Asia/Pacific’. Richard Paisley, founder of specialist executive search firm Proco Global Group, says there is something important behind that nomenclature. Business and politicians “are talking a good game”, he says, “and recognising that Asia is by far their strongest trading partner” — a tie that needs to be fostered.

Key indicators

Proco opened a Sydney office last December. Australia is “incredibly parochial”, Paisley says. “When we’ve tried to do business development [remotely] in Australia we get nowhere. They [Australians] want to work with Australians or people living in Australia.” The other place where Paisley notes this acutely is Sao Paulo, another destination conjuring up images of a sunkissed, chilled-out ex-patriate lifestyle. This attractive perception can be “a bit of a doubleedged sword”, he says, the danger being people’s productivity dropping when they arrive in the promised land. Andy Hill, vice president – talent and resourcing at advanced technologies firm Invensys, who delivered a session at last month’s Smart Resourcing 2013, sponsored by Eploy, adds that this “laid-back culture” also requires a different approach compared to when he comes to deal, for example, with the more formal South-East Asian markets. In addition, he tells Recruiter, “a lot of candidates are very demanding in terms of what they expect from the company… further into Asia they [jobseekers] probably want to impress; I very much find in Australia local candidates want the company to impress them.” There is a similar challenge, Hill goes on to say, “particularly in Melbourne and Brisbane, the areas we work for in our technology sector… there’s a big, emerging contract workforce. That flexible workforce

The Australian dollar is strong. £1 today gets you less than $1.50; it was briefly worth over $2.60 in late 2008

London is closer to Beijing at 8,160km than the Australian capital Canberra is to the Chinese capital (8,160km vs 8,980km)

Ciett’s ‘The agency work industry around the world’ (2011) finds 3,500 employment agencies in Australia, employing 15,000 staff internally, respectively the world’s fifth and 10th highest totals Two Australian cities are in Intelligence Group’s 2011 list of most desirable cities to work in: Sydney (5th) and Melbourne (9th); the only other country achieving this is the US. Also in the top 100 are Perth (40), Brisbane (57) and Canberra (61).

is quite a common challenge; people don’t want to convert to permanent”. Despite its attractiveness, Tim Naylor, manager for technical recruiter Morson in Australia, says: “The talent has been the big struggle and it’s been a cause for escalating costs on projects.” Activism from the unions — the great bugbear of outspoken mining tycoon Gina Rinehart, one of the world’s richest women — further exacerbates the issue. That said, “another difficulty comes from outside, with globally mobile professionals able to command a higher salary in the Middle East. If you’ve got the technical skills on the white collar side, then getting them over is pretty straightforward”, Naylor counters. While the markets of the Middle East impinge on talent supply, it is from further East that pressure has really mounted, after years of Australia being unaffected by the global financial crisis and growing throughout. Naylor explains: “The prosperity in Australia lies in the demand for all its exports; it’s a resource-rich country and it really revolves around areas like India and China, so through the global financial crisis those countries weren’t affected perhaps as much as Europe. Their demand for steel and iron ore in Australia was still huge but there’s been a bit of a recent slump, which has then hit Australia and given projects a bit of a wake-up call.” Hiring has been hit (see charts below), and Naylor notes also that September’s federal election is “really affecting companies… I call up a lot of companies who say they’re holding fire”. There is still work for Morson there, and “exciting opportunities”, but Naylor’s sense is that 2013 is likely to be something of a “holding year”. SPONSORED BY

HIRING INTENTIONS BY SECTOR

GDP GROWTH

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■ Australia ■ China ■ India ■ Eurozone ■ US

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12 10

15 10

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Q1 2012

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17_Recruit_march13_Global spotlight.indd 17

Q4 2012

Q1 2013

-6 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

ACCORDING TO THE IMF WORLD ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

SAM BURNE JAMES sam.burnejames@recruiter.co.uk

% GDP GROWTH

MANPOWER’S EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK SURVEY OF 2,250 EMPLOYERS

AUSTRALIA HAS EMERGED VIRTUALLY UNSCATHED FROM THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC DOWNTURN, YET COMPANIES ARE NOW HOLDING OFF ON HIRING AND PROJECTS

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MARCH 2013

07/03/2013 08:36

Opinion

Soapbox

Thrive or survive in 2013

SOAP

BOX

DESPITE A STORMY 2012, THE GOOD SHIP ‘TEMPORARY RECRUITMENT’ STILL FACES CHOPPY WATERS IN 2013, AND RECRUITERS WILL NEED TO UP THEIR GAME As a sector, it’s fair to say that recruitment is reaping the benefits of an uncertain economy. This is especially true in temporary recruitment, seeing as a 5.5% increase in turnover from temporary and contract business actually drove the growth of the industry in 2012.* The reason why is clear — businesses are understandably reluctant to increase the headcount of permanent workers, due in part to the economy and secondly, increasingly convoluted EU legislation, making it much more difficult for businesses to hire permanent staff. As such, businesses are naturally attracted to having a more flexible workforce, which they can scale up and down depending on their business requirement. So should we sit back, reap the rewards and hope that the good times keep on rolling? Absolutely not. In my view, 2013 will not be smooth sailing for the recruitment sector. For starters, there is a clear requirement to improve standards across the industry.

The recruitment industry landscape is changing at a rapid pace, driven by the raised expectations of hirers and expectation of temp workers. Agencies and recruiters have a strong desire to remain competitive, but there needs to be an understanding that clients are looking for continuous improvements in service standards. Like the recent high-profile corporate tax scandals, I predict the recruitment sector will be questioned over its lack of transparency and treatment of temporary workers. It is true that agencies won’t make more money through greater transparency, but they will need to change due to an evolving industry and the very real threat of reputational risk. At a time when the types of vacancies are changing, with professional positions increasingly shifting from permanent placements to contract positions, the relationship between the hirer and client needs to be rock solid. For the client to

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extend their business, they need to be assured that their hirer is acting in their best interests, whilst also dealing with their worker ethically. It’s a candidate’s market and stories of mistreated workers being unethically paid are already hitting the headlines, severely damaging the reputation of the agencies that hired them. I anticipate that these stories will be the tip of the iceberg. Large companies are also beginning to examine their supply chains through both financial and ‘ethical’ audits. These companies do not want their name dragged through the mud when stories of unhappy workers hit the masses. It makes them look bad; and the industry look worse. So for recruiters to thrive, the lessons for 2013 are clear: progressive thinking, ethical treatment of workers and a greater sense of transparency. *According to REC Industry Trends Survey 2012 MATTHEW SANDERS is chief executive ofﬁcer of

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06/03/2013 11:28

Opinion

Web chat Fair criticism of LinkedIn

•

I READ Alistair Blair’s article on LinkedIn (Bloggers with Bite, Recruiter, February 2013) with great interest and think his criticism of the site was fair. I feel it is a shame that LinkedIn (LI) is focusing its efforts purely on being a recruitment site — it used to be primarily a networking site and some members have the right to feel like they have been misled. The quantity of spam that LI produced for its members is intolerable and recruiters who want to get success from using it should purely use it as a name generation tool and focus on traditional headhunting methods – ie pick up the phone! Finally, I feel that LI is missing a trick. They are trying to stack adverts high and sell them cheap and here is where the problem lies — this should be a premium function with a premium price; less is more to the advertiser and the viewer. Jon Dweck, managing director, Pod Talent

Keep up with innovation

•

I THOUGHT Matthew Jeffery’s Bloggers with Bite in January’s

Recruiter was an excellent piece and I totally agree with the points made. We conduct candidate and client surveys to ensure we are not falling short on either the service or innovation front, and one of the key things that is thrown up is the candidate’s desire to receive individualised communications. It’s deﬁnitely the age of personalised messaging, especially with the deluge of social media channels available to facilitate direct communication with your customer base. On the technology side, I introduced the use of augmented reality into our advertising in 2011, however quickly found that the market was not yet ready for this as people were only just getting their heads around QR codes. I think as an industry there is so much we can do to attract the very best talent both to our own industry and to the markets we serve. We can do things differently and don’t need to follow the same model that has been around since the dawn of time. Use the technologies that are available to you; they are in the main free and can really lift your brand, making it relevant and approachable to the people you want to attract. Jo Dionysiou, marketing manager, Carrot Recruitment Group

In-house vs agency tension is alive

•

WITH REFERENCE to your article on 5 March (‘In-house recruiters should learnt from their agency cousins’, recruiter.co.uk) as a recruitment manager that has worked agency side, then in-house and just recently set up my own agency, I feel that there will always be a healthy tension between the two. The major challenge for in-house recruiters is to ﬁll each and every job and so they don’t have the luxury of walking away when the going gets tough. The tension with many external agencies is that their focus can often be on ‘doing the deal’ and not on creating a long-term partnership. There are many agencies out there that are capable of developing long-term partnerships, yet unfortunately agencies in general get tarred with the same brush. I believe the art of good in-house recruiting is to be able to recruit directly for most positions, but also to forge relationships with a small number of reliable suppliers that are committed to developing a mutually beneﬁcial relationship for when they struggle to source directly. Failure to do this will allow for ‘back door’ recruitment activity where managers will feel pressured to accept CVs from external suppliers. The result of this is that in-house recruiter will be left with the task of picking up the pieces and trying to bring things back into process, which is usually no fun for all parties concerned. John Adams, director, careerz

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Soundbites

“With the consultation around the Conduct Regulations underway, what changes would you like to see introduced?” Emma Roberts Support services manager, White Horse Employment

The ‘reasonable’ temp-to-perm transfer fee needs clarification. The business must be compensated for the ‘loss’ of agency worker revenue, but we have found that proactive marketing of the flexibility offered by temp-to-perm positions has added another string to our bow in terms of service delivery. Rather than hinder agency workers moving jobs, a ‘reasonable’ transfer agreement negotiated from the outset has encouraged a healthy ‘try before you buy’ relationship, benefiting hirers and agency workers without penalty.

Jonathan Walters Senior associate, Charles Russell

While there is a clear need to regulate against rogue employment agencies, for me a lot of the things in there go beyond that and create unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy. They really need to be simplified when it comes to what recruiters are allowed to charge for temporary jobs and transfers, although the aim of avoiding a chilling effect on recruitment of temp workers caused by some employment agencies applying extortionate transfer fees is sound. As the regulations have been through a couple of amendments now, simplification in general would be beneficial.

Jeanette Barrowcliffe Finance director, Meridian Business Support

Any changes should relieve the administrative burden for recruiters, while maintaining protection for workers. Of the areas highlighted by BIS for review, I think the whole notion of self-regulation and data sharing is particularly nonsensical, a misleading solution that should be abandoned. As we have said across the influx of government legislation over recent years, the only effective way to police agencies, some of which flout regulations even with a disciplinary body in place, is through more thorough external inspections that carry significant consequences for non-compliance.

Tom Hadley

Director, policy & professional services, Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC)

In our opinion, BIS should: clarify how temporary workers are defined and whether new legislation will aim to protect individuals and/or limited companies; consider how intermediaries should be covered by new legislation given their responsibilities for employing and paying individuals; reexamine how employment businesses are defined whilst considering the definition of employment agency; and not legislate to require employment businesses to underwrite payment of temporary workers where other parties have failed to pay those workers. It is important that while protection is provided to individuals working through umbrella companies, this shouldn’t result in unnecessary burdens being placed on legitimate limited company contractors. • For additional comment on the Conduct Regulations, see Bloggers with Bite on p42

IF YOU HAVE A LETTER OR WOULD LIKE TO BE A CONTRIBUTOR TO SOUNDBITES, EMAIL... VANESSA.TOWNSEND@RECRUITER.CO.UK

RECRUITER

MARCH 2013

07/03/2013 15:02

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Insight

Using ARMS to get talent. No, really… HOW DO YOU SURVIVE AS A RECRUITER IN A SMALL TO MEDIUMSIZED ENTERPRISE IN FAST-MOVING, COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTS? To compete with similar-sized and larger players alike, SMEs can create smart sustainable ecosystems to acquire talent quickly. I call the fast, fiercely competitive environment an Agile Environment and recruiting methods within it Agile Recruiting Methodologies or ARMS. Below is a snapshot of ARMS’ important components and methods: Process: Define and document every step. Use scenario planning to consider every possible situation that can develop. Rerun the scenarios to pinpoint situations that can throw the process off the rails. Governments and militaries across the world have used scenario planning successfully for any diplomatic or military intervention for years. It is also essential for strategic workforce planning. Training: Training must be ingrained in your recruiting operations, ie every two weeks. Develop results-orientated training curricula, and include subject-based training for the skill you are recruiting. Start with the job description and keywords given to you by the hiring manager. However, if you rely on only these two pieces of information, this can become a keyword-based search. Let’s say you are recruiting someone to work on software application within the US Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), then you must understand superficially what that application does, the technology behind it and how it fits in with the DLA. It is also important to get trained on how a security clearance process works, who is eligible and who is not. If recruiting a claims officer in the insurance industry, then it is useful to learn how the claims process works. Subjectbased training can be a quick 30 minutes with the hiring manager or a formal programme. Acquiring subject knowledge helps you find good people and have a better conversation with candidates. Requirement analysis: Beginning the search without clearly understanding the requirement is putting the cart before the horse and causes delays. Scrutinise the job description and ask questions, use online search engines or seek the expertise of experts to come up with the right search strings. Visualise: Pause, and visualise your target in terms of skills, experience, background and geography. This will help you to identify and narrow your field of candidates then quickly zero in on the right one. Toolkit analysis: Take stock of all tools at your disposal and list them. Continue to ‘add & eliminate’ tools till you hit the right search. Although

recruiting experts have written off CV databases as being obsolete, they are still your best bet for quick results. That’s where you will find people who are actively looking for jobs, unlike search on social networks, where prospects are passive. Accelerators: These are a set of pre-qualified tools that will kick in even before you put your traditional tools to work. An accelerator could be an internal job-posting portal, employee referral programme, niche database, online search agent or a target organisation that can help in early stages of your search. Your connections are the most important accelerators. When time is of the essence there should always be a few go-to ‘tools’. Task-Orientated Tactical Teams (TOTTS): Split teams into small two or three-member teams to do one of the following: focus on distinct geographies, use different sets of tools or specialise on a specific task in the process like sourcing, interviewing etc. Leveraging the capabilities of your TOTTS will result in increased efficiency and reduction in turnaround time. Relationships: While business needs continue to drive talent acquisition, on the ground recruiting is more about relationships than numbers. But great numbers result from good working relationships with candidates. Online and offline relationships with your candidates are the foundation to ‘smart recruiting’. Successful recruiters are brilliant conversationalists, eloquent storytellers and great listeners who depend heavily on their connections to quickly find great candidates. The Four-Hour Rule: Secure either a candidate or substantial traction in the ‘First Four Hours’ of your search. When part of a planned approach, this rule turns into an incredible field-tested technique, wherein you quickly understand the specifications, line up your tools and put your accelerators to work. Isolate yourself from everything and have a razor-sharp focus for the first four hours. This will yield surprising results and help you pinpoint pain points, re-define the search or abort it. Evaluate: With only a brief window of opportunity open, evaluate your toolkit, search strings and approach every two hours. A 15-minute brainstorming session with the team can bring out some stellar ideas. Have a broader operational review of these efforts and processes weekly. ARMS serve as both an operational platform in SMEs and as important components in overall talent acquisition strategy for larger companies.

Power Points Be process orientated – define and document: Candidates will love the fact that you are sticking to the game plan. Train and re-retain: Learn the process and subject to be able to have an intelligent conversation with your candidates. Requirement and toolkit analysis: Pause and carefully understand the need. Visualize the target population. List the tools. Relationships: The most important factor affecting your recruiting. Accelerators: Identify, deploy and jump start your searches. TOTTS: Use your tactical teams wisely to move with agility. Four–Hour Rule: Have a razor sharp focus for the first four hours. Evaluate: Make this an ongoing process to quickly eliminate what is not working.

SHAILENDRA JAISINGHA WORKS IN STRATEGIC TALENT ACQUISITION AT NIIT TECHNOLOGIES IN THE US

Share your insight and blue-sky thinking. Contact the editor: deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

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The Challenge

It’s not the device, it’s how you use it Marc Christophides Group ITdirector

IN LINE WITH OTHER SUPPORT ORGANISATIONS, STHREE DECIDED TO LET STAFF USE THEIR OWN DEVICES FOR WORK. HORNBILL HELPED MANAGE THE INITIATIVE

THE CHALLENGE Global business processes throw up many challenges to global organisations — not least is how to connect staff in different offices on different continents. As the world is becoming increasingly more mobile, one solution is to implement a bring-your-owndevice (BYOD) policy, whereby employees use their own mobile devices to link into the business remotely, giving the ability to work more flexibly and, hopefully, efficiently. Last year, following a proliferation in the use of mobile devices by the staff — and in line with the trend followed by many IT and service organisations — specialist staffing firm SThree decided to formally go down the BYOD route. The recruiter has come a long way since the launch of its first company, Computer Futures, in London in 1986 with a staff of four. Today, the international group, which specialises in IT, engineering, energy, pharmaceuticals and banking & finance, boasts 64 offices on five continents.

“If you are at an airport and request an app, you can be connected within 10 minutes” PAT BOLGER

Managing and supporting IT for multiple offices in one country has its own difficulties; giving access and supporting more than 2,200 users in offices ranging from North and South America to the Middle East and Australia seems daunting to say the least. The man tasked with just this challenge, Marc Christophides, group IT director of service support at SThree, told Recruiter: “Because we’re a global company, we needed a solution to work everywhere as there was a lot of dead time between client visits to international destinations, for example.” More than ever, in the fast-moving, quick-turnaround world of recruitment, staff need constant access to services such as email, recruitment-related software, telephony and virtual desktops. For a company, adopting BYOD reduces not only the outlay on the latest handheld devices, but it also cuts down on the cost of delivery to all parts of the globe — not to mention when the hardware goes missing or computers are damaged in transit. SThree had already adopted an IT support management (ITSM) system from software specialist Hornbill in 2011. With the implementation of BYOD, Christophides needed to address the challenges around data security, scalability, support and, most importantly, automation. Hornbill suggested its Supportworks software to help SThree roll out BYOD to its workers worldwide.

Key Lessons Marc Christophides advised that any global solution that supported BYOD needed to take into account local governance or legalities in a particular location. Hornbill’s Supportworks automates any approval problems, wherever a user is based

THE SOLUTION The ﬁrst step was to get take-up from the SThree workforce across the globe. Hornbill’s Supportworks helped Christophides market the service internally through emails and campaigns, highlighting the ﬂexibility and ease of use. One of the advantages was SThree’s ‘Good Messaging’ app, created by app specialist Good Technology, which controls email and calendar settings for employees’ devices. This means wherever in the world an employee is, they can access their emails and calendar meetings on their smartphone or tablet. Even though SThree is a people business, it relies on its database and data sharing to grow its business. SThree created an app that could be used on handheld devices. Data security was an important consideration, but as apps are self-contained, there are no support costs involved. Pat Bolger, chief evangelist at Hornbill, explained that the “Supportworks

Patrick Bolger Chief evangelist

software integrates the apps and manages the system” by providing an interface for the user. However, the next step was how to roll out access to the app, quickly and globally. SThree and Hornbill created a policy approval document, which users have to formally accept before they can download any app. Then, Bolger told Recruiter, “if you are at an airport and request an app, you can be connected within 10 minutes”. And the beauty about it being an app, he added, is that because all the information is contained within the app in the Cloud, “if a phone [or any device] gets lost or stolen, the user can be disconnected straight away”. Christophides added: “Supportworks automatically removes access from the user if a person leaves the business.” With the help of Supportworks’ automation of the project, SThree was able to roll out BYOD worldwide, managing activation of authorised apps to 1,100 devices in only three weeks. The automation was key for Christophides. “Once an employee leaves the app ‘dies’— automatically,” he said. “Apps are completely device independent. [Supportworks gives] automated business approval, and as it’s automated with other tools, it gives a great audit trail.” He added that SThree would be “missing a trick” if they didn’t go down the BYOD route. And Bolger agreed, telling Recruiter: “It’s been really, really good. They’re really happy with it. It’s not about your device, it’s what you do with it.”

Would you like to be involved in The Challenge? Contact Vanessa Townsend at vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk

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Profile

Russell Clements DEEDEE DOKE MET THE FORMER CEO OF STHREE AND CURRENT NON-EXEC CHAIR OF CUBE19 Any conversation with Russell Clements covers a major expanse of intriguing territory. He effortlessly quotes Italian philosophers, confides evil secrets from an early job at a golf course, and admits to “what (Karl) Marx would call ‘a fetishistic interest’ in things like clothes” — all while we talk business DNA and the future of recruitment. Then there’s also the small matter of the new life, complete with portfolio career, which Clements launched a few months ago after leaving the chief executive officership at SThree. But more about that later. After eight years at the top of one of the recruitment industry’s most iconic companies, the University of Essex government studies graduate-turned-recruitment industry executive stepped down as CEO on 1 January. As he describes his departure from SThree, where he worked for 26 years, it all came down to timing, “a bit of kismet, a bit of Venus and Mars in alignment” with internal succession a key factor in his decision to leave. His tenure at the helm included experiencing the exhilaration of leading the company’s float on the London Stock Exchange, an experience he tells Recruiter was “an unusual and privileged opportunity”, “incredibly intense” and his most significant achievement in the role as SThree’s CEO. Towards the end of the process of floating the company, “the markets were moving against us”, he recalls during a conversation at a members’ club in Shoreditch, in London’s East End, “and it’s fair to say that at certain points, it was touch and go whether or not it was going to be achievable. So pulling it out of the bag… was very satisfying. “Because, at the end,” he continues, “your job as chief executive is head salesperson in that situation. And as a salesman to my fingertips, getting that away was the biggest sale, the biggest ticket item I’ve ever shifted.” He clearly relishes the memory and, even more, the achievement. At SThree, the float may have been the highest high to date of a career of heady prosperity which has led Clements down a much more capitalist path than his younger self might ever have imagined. “I was always an odd kind of Marxist really because at the age of 15 or 16, I had a stall at Portobello Road market; I was always a bit more entrepreneurial,” he counters. “I’ve always had what [Karl] Marx would call ‘a fetishistic interest’ in things like clothes. So I think I would always have struggled a bit with the image of being the impoverished academic. “If I listened to myself now at almost 50 when I was 20, I’d probably hate myself,” he admits. “But the fact of the matter is, life teaches you that a man who’s not a socialist before he’s 21 doesn’t have a heart; a man who’s a socialist after 21 doesn’t have a brain. And there’s an element of truth in that.”

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The multi-brand SThree has icon status for a variety of reasons: the 2005 float that made serious millionaires of its top executives, its relentless track record of profitability and an ingrained culture of drive, hard work and play finds former employees identifying themselves as “an SThree boy/girl” years after their departure. And the urbane, sophisticated Clements is something of an icon himself. Brash, brainy and not one to mince words, owner of the best-known hair in the industry, Clements epitomises success in recruitment. He has the house in Ibiza, a reputed few million pounds’ worth of SThree shares as he is, in his words, “a committed, longterm investor in SThree”, and in his prime, is tanned, rested and already taking on new projects, business and personal alike. “I have teenage children… so any aspiration to drink myself to death in Ibiza is probably going to have to be postponed until my kids finish their education at the very least,” he jokes. “I knew I wouldn’t be sailing around the world, I wouldn’t be doing some sort of holiday so to speak. I also knew there was no way I’d be able to do nothing. In fact,” he adds, “the big challenge for me was always going to be attempting to do something close to nothing for at least a little while.” The best publicised to date of his new business projects is his non-executive chairmanship of visual analytics firm cube19, a business in which he is also an investor. He has also been appointed chairman at the Oyster Partnership, a privately-owned recruitment business specialising in the property and surveying sectors. A third business project involves a web-enabled product that allows users to “interview and meet on a virtual basis”, he says. “I suppose the obvious thing for me to do would be to go on the board of other public companies. And while I’m not ruling that out,” Clements says, “it would take a particularly interesting opportunity for me to get excited about that. I always thought that I’d be far more likely to find working with private companies and perhaps smaller companies more interesting. And that’s partly because you can [have an] influence there; it’s also because those companies are more agile and flexible. “The final part of it was that anything I was going to be interested in doing because of my background at SThree was, from a very early stage,” he says, “having

CLEMENTS’ PHILOSOPHY “If I was being a pretentious git, I’d say ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’ — or a version of that — has been part of the way I’ve looked at running the business I’ve been involved with”

SECRET OF SUCCESS:

“I’M CLEVER AND I WORK HARD”

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07/03/2013 08:50

PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER SEARLE

Profile

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Profile

a stake in it to add some skin in the game — to take a meaningful stake, not some sort of a tokenistic stake.” On the personal side, he’s working his way through a list of “non business” projects he’s always wanted to “tick off”. He likes to get involved with “fairly intensive, quite time-consuming things… pretty intensively over a relatively short period of time”. For instance, he says, “it’s an embarrassment to me I don’t speak another language, and I’ve committed to learn Spanish. That demands a certain amount of commitment”. At several points during our conversation, he mentions being “pretty bullish” on the medium-term future of the recruitment industry. How is he defining ‘medium term’? And what are his views then on the industry’s longterm future? “Having spent 26 years in the business, my definition of long term is pretty long term. So when I say long term, I’m thinking about five years hence,” he says. “I’ve been told there’s been existential threats [to the industry] on a number of occasions: I’ve been told we were going to be the roadkill on the information superhighway, that [job board] Monster was going to have our lunch — so I’m a little cynical about the idea that there’s going to be some killer app somewhere that’s going to effectively wipe the world of the need for recruitment companies,” he says. He continues dryly: “I haven’t got a crystal ball but I was paid to think about the medium-term future of a recruitment company for quite a long time. Do I think things might get worse before they get better? I think that’s possible. But at the same time, if you look at the 26-year timeframe SThree has been in business, you

know we’ve been profitable every year for those 26 years in what is perceived to be a cyclical business. So I think it’s been a remarkably robust performance if you take that kind of longer-term view of things, and I don’t see anything on the horizon to shake my confidence in that. “And if I did,” he adds, “then you’d be seeing that reflected in my behaviour.” One can take the lad, in this case Clements, out of SThree, but is it possible to totally leave this company behind? “The beauty of SThree is that you get to hang out with some of the most driven, interesting and smart people that you’re ever going to meet anywhere, and I’ll get a lot less of that fix, inevitably,” he says. “That’s a daily fix of inspiration and motivation that you get just buzzing off very motivated people. That’s what I’ll miss more than anything else.” So there is something to a legendary SThree ‘mystique’? “I think the point about the mystique — people do think there’s some sort of fairy dust, and some sort of magic there. Actually, it’s taken a long time to get it right,” Clements acknowledges. “The SThree culture is unashamedly set about, ‘If you want to be successful, don’t expect to do it easily, don’t expect to do it without a hell of a lot of hard work. And frankly, if you don’t buy into that, if you think you can do it all by being a genius, or so wonderfully creative that you can effectively fork over the hard slog, then we’re not the kind of company for you.” And finally, is Clements a believer for life? “Absolutely I’m an SThree boy,” he says with a grin. “Cut me, and I bleed SThree!”

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MARCH 2013

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Contractor services

Unclear signals for contractors AS THE GOVERNMENT TRIES TO DISPEL PUBLIC ANGER TOWARDS ONGOING TAX AVOIDANCE SCANDALS, THE CONTRACTOR COMMUNITY CAN FEEL IT IS BEING UNFAIRLY TARGETED IN THE LATEST TREASURY REVIEW. SCOTT BEAGRIE INVESTIGATES

The flexible workforce continues to be described as the group of workers that could lift the country out of the economic doldrums. The UK’s contractor community has indeed proven invaluable by helping both private and public sector organisations to scale their workforces up and down when necessary. So contractors were perhaps entitled to feel justifiably aggrieved last year when they were once again placed under the tax avoidance spotlight by the government when HM Treasury conducted a review of off-payroll workers in the public sector.

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Lisa Keeble, managing director of Contractor Umbrella, reckons that the subject of tax avoidance is so emotive that the government is trying to control the “public outrage” of it. “As the contractor market is invariably very highly paid because they are highly skilled, they are almost perceived in the same way as bankers,” she says. “So the way they deal with their tax arrangements is always going to be under scrutiny.” The Treasury review identified a list of 2,400 key

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Contractor services

off-payroll appointees who were engaged at an annual cost to the department of more than £58.2k each, equivalent to the minimum salary for senior civil servants. It also found that two-fifths of these had been engaged in an off-payroll capacity for more than two years. Two-fifths were identified as IT contractors, while seven in 10 were earning more than £400 a day. As a result of the findings, it was deemed that all public sector contractors earning more than £220 a day and working on assignments of six months or longer must provide their departments with “formal assurance” that their tax and National Insurance obligations were being met fully. This raised a number of concerns in the contractor market, chief among them that it would force many people on to their public sector department’s payroll. There were also fears that the crackdown would result in a mass departure of freelance contractors to the private sector. As evidence of this Keeble points to various discussion threads on contractor forums where some of the most vocal opponents claimed they were going to turn their back on the public sector altogether. “They feel the skills they [bring] are being devalued and there is quite a lot of bad feeling about it,” she says, suggesting many as a result would even seek employment outside of the UK. Clearly, contractor service providers would not want to witness any such exodus of talent to markets overseas and consequently they have an instrumental role to play in making sure this doesn’t happen. Andrew Webster, head of sales at contractor services firm Outsauce UK (formerly Oriel Group), suggests that although successive governments recognise that a flexible workforce is vital in helping the UK get through the current economic tough times the “cloudy and unclear” messaging that exists around the recommendations is of no help to anyone. Contractors need clear guidance, he says: “While we are not qualified to talk specifically about tax and employment status if you take advice from the specialists as we do then you can adapt or enhance existing processes to make sure you are providing best advice to your contractor freelancers.” The guidelines also present fresh opportunities for contractor services firms, claims Keeble. “Because if you want to work inside IR35, the administrative burden is as heavy as it would be if you were working outside [the scope] of it and there aren’t the financial rewards to compensate for that,” she says. “So a lot of people who are working in the public sector, should they choose to continue on those contracts (over £220 per day and over six months), will probably look to umbrella companies as an easier solution.” The public sector was given timescales for implementation of the new rules and with the threat of sanctions for failing to comply, public sector bodies appear to be following the recommendations according to Julian Ball, legal director at PayStream, a supplier of accountancy services for contractors and freelance workers. Some departments, such as the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) have gone further, insisting that contractors use a PAYE option only, even if the assignment falls outside of IR35. Ball suggests the fact that BIS and others are opting to

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IF A CONTRACTOR HAS HAD A PROFESSIONAL IR35 REVIEW WHICH SHOWS HIM OR HER TO BE OUTSIDE IR35 THEN MOST PUBLIC SECTOR BODIES WILL ACCEPT THIS JULIAN BALL go further than the recommendations themselves could be good news for umbrella companies. “In our experience a letter from the umbrella company confirming that PAYE and NI have been deducted is sufficient to satisfy the public sector department, although some also ask to see payslips,” he says. “We may see a greater use of umbrella companies versus personal services companies (PSC) as a result.” Ball adds that this is not to say that elsewhere in the public sector contractors can’t operate as a PSC. “If a contractor has had a professional IR35 review which shows him or her to be outside IR35 then most public sector bodies will accept this,” he says. “This may be an opportunity for service providers with inhouse compliance units that carry out proper reviews although these are few and far between. Another possibility is for a contractor to be paid salary only (no dividend) through his PSC while working in the public sector.” Clearly it is still too early to assess the true impact the recommendations are having on the contractor market as well as the companies that service them. When the guidelines were first announced, the Professional Contractors Group (PCG) expressed serious concerns to government as it was uncertain as to how they would impact legitimate contractors. Despite further guidance being issued by the Cabinet Office, many unanswered questions for contractors remained and the PCG warned the lack of clarity could lead to public sector organisations “misinterpreting them and shutting out contractors wholesale”.

Rob Crossland

Lisa Keeble

Andrew Webster

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Contractor services

George Anastasi, policy and external relations adviser at PCG, says the professional body has since worked closely with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and claims in doing so it has managed to ensure that the damage to legitimate contractors is minimal. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our original guidance to contractors, that they should seek a contract review, has been shown to be accurate,â&#x20AC;? he explains. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Of course, while the process beds in there could still be cases where overzealous departments are misinterpreting the rules however we believe in the long term, they will not affect legitimate contractors unduly.â&#x20AC;? Nonetheless, there is still a feeling among the contractor services community that the recommendations havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been sufficiently thought through and Webster reminds us of the dangers of this: â&#x20AC;&#x153;I firmly believe that the current legislation [IR35] which, if followed appropriately and with an approach agreed by all parties involved, could potentially be a good piece of legislation,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But what you have is [widespread] misinterpretation of it and that, notwithstanding, up until six or seven months ago HMRC didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the resource or expertise or even the infrastructure to ensure the contractor freelance workforce complies with this legislation.â&#x20AC;? Meanwhile, Keeble describes what is happening as â&#x20AC;&#x153;IR35 legislation with knobs onâ&#x20AC;? while Rob Crossland, chief executive officer of Optionis, parent

I WOULD URGE THE POLICY MAKERS TO CONTINUE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE VALUE OF AN ENTREPRENEURIAL-LED ECONOMY AND REFRAIN FROM A POTENTIAL OVER REACTION IN THIS SPACE ROB CROSSLAND group of umbrella company Parasol, claims any form of clampdown has the potential be the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut in his view. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If policy makers truly understood the nature and value of the flexible workforce then they would perhaps be able to consider appropriate arrangements,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is a large spread myth that this space is dominated by tax-led solutions and that the public purse suffers as a result; this is not the case. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There may be very sensitive senior interim appointments that require additional scrutiny but a truly independent contractor will be penalised and restricted from investing in his or her business by being potentially forced onto a payroll,â&#x20AC;? Crossland continues. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I would urge the policy makers to continue to learn more about the value of an entrepreneurial-led economy and refrain from a potential over reaction in this space. The recent withdrawal of the potential controlling persons legislation should also help inform these views.â&#x20AC;?

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